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INDUSTRIAL 
EDUCATION 



Report of the 
Committee on Industrial Education 

. H. E. MILES, Chairman 



AT THE 

Twenty-first Annual Convention 

OF THE 

National Association of Manufacturers 

NEW YORK CITY 
MAY 15, 1916 



Issued from the Secretary's Office, 30 Church Street, 
New York City ' y 



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B,^ Of D. 

MAR 30 1917 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE 

ON 

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 



"What you zvould find in a people, yon must first put 

into its schools/' — Humboldt. 
''The nation that has the schools has the trade/' — 

Bismarck. 
When asked, 3,000 years ago, ''What shall we teach the 

youth r' a Spartan king replied, "Teach them what 

they ivill do when they are men." 



The school year just ending has been fraught with much 
of interest in the furtherance of vocational education. Wide- 
spread consideration has developed a common judgment. 

No longer is there fear that these schools, under public and 
practical direction, will be inconsiderate of spiritual values. A 
mechanic will not be injured spiritually or socially by training 
that makes him a better mechanic. He might be injured in many 
ways by vocational training that failed to meet his occupational 
needs. 

The members of a vocational school board need not be any 
less cultural, patriotic or wisely idealistic because each has had a 
lifelong experience in manufacturing or commerce. A board 
without such experience cannot succeed because "They know 
not what they do." 

A Representative Control 

The study of the Smith-Hughes bill for Federal Aid for 
A'ocational Education has brought all the organizations to which 
Congress will quickest look, to insist upon this representative 
and co-operative control and direction, including the Chamber 
of Commerce of the U. S. A., the Division of Superintendents* 
of the National Education Association, the American Federation 
of Labor, the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial 
Education, the American Home Economics Association, the In- 
ternational Association of Master Painters and Decorators and 
the National Association of Manufacturers. 

It is a satisfaction to know that our organization was the 
first to advance this principle of representative control as of 
prime necessity, proven so by generations of experience in the 
foremost industrial nations of the world, largely productive of 
German efficiency, and of the spirit, happiness and the wealth of 
Republican France, of Belgium and of Holland, Denmark and 
Austria. 



* Voted at their Detroit meeting January last, with 5000 State and City 
School Superintendents in attendance. 

1 



The National Chamber of Commerce includes over seven 
hundred commercial organizations representative of every State 
and Territory, and 300,000 firms and corporations. Our organi- 
zation fairly represents the inanufacturers in this matter and 
their desire to make all fair and necessary contributions by way 
of business adjustments. 

We may also contemplate with satisfaction, the attitude of 
the American Federation of Labor upon Industrial Education. 
Its position is substantially identical with our own. Its presi- 
dent, addressing the chairman of the Committee on Education of 
the United States Senate, on hearing the statement of the repre- 
sentative of the National Association of Manufacturers, said, 
"That is exactly what I would say." Both these organizations 
hold with the National Chamber of Commerce that any Bill that 
would fail to establish a Federal Board representative of the 
interests especially involved, should not be permitted to become 
law. They are confident that the public judgment is now so 
confirmed in this respect, that if the Congress by any chance 
fails so to provide, a later Congress will. 

Federal Aid for Vocational Education 
Amend the Smith-Hugrhes Bill 

These organizations, with others, are urging an amendment 
to Sec. 6 of the House Bill (H. 11250) and of the Senate Bill 
(S. 703) to wit: 

" That the Federal Board for Vocational Education is hereby created, 
to consist of five citizens of the United States, four of whom shall be appointed 
by the President. One of these men shall be an employer of labor engaged 
in manufacturing; one an employer engaged in commercial pursuits other 
than manufacturing; one a representative of labor; and one a person engaged 
in agriculture. The Commissioner of Education shall be a member of the 
Board. The Board shall elect annually one of its members as Chairman." 

There is much reason to believe that Senator Hoke Smith, 
chairman. Senator Page and others of the Senate Committee, 
look with favor upon this proposal. 

Action is probable within a few days upon these bills and 
letters from our members and others to members of Congress 
may be of the greatest assistance. The Bill gives about $1,000,000 
next year, and the amount rises rapidly to $7,000,000 per annum, 
on condition that the States spend a like sum. It will accomplish 
much if wisely used and may be undesirable if unwisely used. 
Of the $7,000,000 there is given for agriculture $3,000,000, for 
industries and commerce $3,000,000 and for training teachers 
$1,000,000. 

Federal Guidance Needed More than Money 

As President Wilson said last January, "V\^e ought to have 
a gi eat system of industrial and vocational education under Fed- 

2 



eral guidance and with Federal aid." Money is of minor con- 
sequence except as it supports and dignifies the Federal guid- 
ance ; brains, not money ; brains fused in the hot furnace of deep 
and inclusive experience. 

The question is not one of education only, but of educa- 
tion plus industry. One cannot teach what he does not know. 
The Federal Board must know, in the only way possible, 
the way of vital life experience, what are the needs, the 
aspirations and the hopes of industry in both the field of 
labor and of management. It must have even that "sixth sense" 
which weighs the inarticulate and makes it articulate. Millions 
of students must be summoned from the work places in office 
and store, in shop and street, each to be advanced by this school- 
ing from whatever is his present place to the next better, and 
the next. The board will succeed in geometric proportion as it 
answers, through the depths of experience, to the experiences 
and the hopes of the millions to be taught. 

This requires, for instance, that there be upon the Federal 
Board a well chosen manufacturer who will express the judg- 
ment and experience of his kind : and another from commerce, 
other than manufacturing: one of labor; and one from agricul- 
ture ; with the Commissioner of Education ex officio for evident 
reasons. Xo one should be forced upon such a board as its 
chairman or its executive ofRcer. The board will know whom 
to choose upon mature consideration. 

Compulsory School Attendance 

Some may not realize that there is close behind this Bill, 
something very different from a mere invitation to partake of 
vocational instruction. Almost immediately, upon the action of 
the States of course, there w^ill be force back of this Bill, 
as in \\'isconsin, Pennsylvania, and in a measure, in several 
other States. 

Everyone is realizing and agreeing that every youthful in- 
dustrial worker under sixteen as in Pennsylvania, or seven- 
teen, as in Wisconsin, or possibly eighteen, must be required by 
State legislation to go to a vocational school a certain number 
of hours each week for instruction in his occupation or a better 
one if need be. America w^ill not longer waste the child life of 
the nation nor leave little children to battle alone in industry 
against the world. Compulsory part-time school attendance for 
young workers during working hours is, in fact, only a broad 
social recognition of the right of the child to efficient, vital train- 
ing in the pathways of life which each must tread, and that 
recognition expressed in terms of agreement and action. With- 
out compulsion, there has been no measurable success anywhere. 
Children come to these schools inversely as their needs. A few 
choice employers assist. The inconsiderate, or mean employer, 
never does. 



Extend the Principle of Representative Government 

The principle of representative government should be ex- 
tended administratively. We call ours a Representative Gov- 
ernment. Legislatively it is so — even in its defects. Administra- 
tively it must become much more representative. Bismarck 
wonderfully furthered this development when, some twenty- 
seven years ago, he socialized and democratized, as it were, In- 
dustrial Education in Germany by making its administration 
thoroughly representative. Said he in effect to the school people, 
"You have done well, but not well enough. I now turn the vo- 
cational schools over to the employers and skilled wage earners 
of the nation." From that time industry, labor and education 
have been one in the common endeavor. The best of each has 
been given to all and the civic and industrial intelligence of the 
nation has advanced by leaps and bounds. 

Ask one of the thousands of German banks if they are 
under governmental control, and the answer will come, in effect : 
"No indeed. We wouldn't stand for governmental control. The 
government can't run banks. It doesn't know how." Ask if 
they are run without control from outside, the answer comes : 
"All our banks are under a common control in the interest of 
ourselves and the public. In our associations of bankers we have 
committees with authority and experience, who see that every 
bank is right or goes out of business. The government re- 
quires this." 

The former chairman of our Committee on Accident Pre- 
vention, Mr. F. C. Schwedtman, sat, upon invitation, with a 
German court for the adjudication of accident cases. From 35 
to 40 cases, some of them very serious, were settled in a day of 
seven hours to the satisfaction of all parties. And why? Be- 
cause the court consisted of one lawyer (as President), two em- 
ployers and two wage earners. Every interest was well repre- 
sented before the court and still better in the court itself in its 
lifelong experiences and appreciations. The costs were neg- 
ligible. 

The Smith-Hughes Bill may be the first to bring together 
in mighty co-operative, administrative accomplishment the 
great forces from which the nation draws its life — agriculture, 
labor, commerce. 

Federal Advisory Committees 

He who sees vocational education only in the lump as a 
big and simple thing does not see it at all. Or he sees it as one 
sees a city in the farthest distance, dim and dull. It is one thing 
to develop educational processes for plumbers ; it is quite another 
thing for master carpenters ; and again very different for textiles 
or salesmanship. Success in each direction will be in geometric 
proportion as committees representative of the employers and 
wage earners in each occupation directly participate in the de- 

4 



termination of the major educational and trade requirements. 
This is illustrated in the foremost city in the world in the train- 
ing of its workers, Munich, Bavaria, where twenty-three rep- 
resentatives of the local occupations constitute the Board of Vo- 
cational Education with the burgomaster and the city superin- 
tendent of schools ex officio members, and with further advisory 
committees in the respective trades. Says Doctor Kerschen- 
steiner, the superintendent, "I could not get along any other 
way." This personnel causes each local occupation, fifty in all, 
to be taught with a particularity and intensiveness that makes the 
city lead in its industries in all the markets of the world. So 
the board in Crefeld, Germany, contains eighteen men from al- 
most as many occupations with the same ex officio members. 
This is the common practice in Europe where the local 
boards are under the Department of Industry and not of Edu- 
cation — a principle which we recognized recently in placing the 
appropriations of the Lever Law and its execution in our agri- 
cultural department. 

Some may feel that any Federal board would naturally have 
these advisory committees, but the present bills neither provide 
for them nor for the payment of their necessary traveling ex- 
penses, etc., as they should. 

Also, it is a strange tendency of human nature once put in 
authority to be self-satisfied and hesitate to seek advice from 
other than subordinates. One very great industrial State pro- 
vides for advisory committees to its State board but does not 
require the board to consult such committees. A committee 
member says that in four years he has never been asked a major 
question. The State is very rich, very great in manufacturing, 
and yet for want of thorough-going correlation in each particu- 
lar major occupation, its vocational education is negligible, and 
in many respects abominable. The Federal advisory committees 
should not be permanent but should act only upon fair necessity 
at the cost of their actual expenses. One such committee in each 
trade will save much of the expense of forty-nine other com- 
mittees in several States, committees disassociated, each dupli- 
cating the work of all the rest. Half of the value of the law 
lies in the service of the representative board and advisory com- 
mittees. 

It may be said that there should be more educators on the 
Federal Board. But the board will be surrounded with educa- 
tors in such numbers as necessarily gives them tremendous in- 
fluence 

Old Complaint Still Prevalent — For Lack of Practical Direction 

Twenty yeais ago the same general arguments were made 
as now for the vocational training of those wlio must live by the 
occupations in success or failure, in happiness or disappoint- 
ment. Millions have been spent meantime and almost every- 
where there is the same outcry and disappointment as before, 

'5 



chiefly because the control has not been representative and the 
schools not correlated vs^th industry. For instance, a vocational 
high school costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a great 
industrial city, is giving four years of instruction in the usual 
school courses in woodworking, metal, etc., for only 950 hours 
per year. Nearby is a great manufactory of astronomical and 
other instruments. Its management is high-minded and gen- 
erous. Says a shop director, "We will not give a week's credit 
against his three years of apprenticeship to a graduate of this vo- 
cational school. He would be no better for us than a bright boy 

PFLAnON OFTNE VrX-AT/OJV/iL SC//OOL TO T//£i 



COMMUJ\riTX 




5! 


X 



P£IAT£D r/i£0/?£T/CAL 
T/^A /N/NO F/?OM SCHOOL 



PJ^/ACTJCi: 



::: occap/ir/o/^AL£/P£/^/£^C£-. 

:;: F/^OM ACTUAL J/iPUSTRy' 



iNsmucr/oN must //a vi: contact w/tn 

SMPlOyMT/VT AND SUJ^PZET^BNT JT, 

right from the street." What a crime, educationally, against the 
boy graduate! Wliat a murder of his high and worthy expec- 
tations, wrongly developed through four trusting and potentially 
invaluable years. The school might have fitted him splendidly 
in two years instead of spoiling him in four. A wretched use 
of the tax money of a patient community. The employer says 
he can't afford to ''unlearn" these boys. He shows his good faith 
and his belief in training, by establishing a school in his own 
shop at large expense and paying his apprentices wages during 
the hours of instruction, 

6 



V . '-^ 



By contrast, consider the White Adding ^lachine Company 
of New Haven, which is employing fourteen and hf teen-year 
boys at 7/^c. per hour — not a bad price for inexperienced 
children, along with a good chance. But the company pays the 
same rate alternate weeks when the boys are in a nearby indus- 
trial school and not working for it at all. This makes each hour 
of actual employment cost 15 cents. Their school instruction is 
directly and particularly related to their shop tasks which are 
progressively arranged. W'hen some of your committee visited 
the shops, these boys were doing work for which the company 
usually paid 30c. an hour — not doing it so fast but fast enough 
to relieve everyone of any taint of charity or dependence. Every- 
one was profiting and satisfied. The only criticism of the super- 
intendent was that he had only a few of these boys and wanted 
fifty. 

At the end of one year these boys work continuously in the 
factory at 20 cents an hour, and schooling is carefully provided 
evenings for those who want it. 

To the same school were going adult mechanics from this 
shop and a graduate from a technical college to pick up threads 
he had missed in college. 

We quote from a report from one of its experts to the 
Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education, which is repre- 
sentative in its personnel and seeks to secure full correlation 
between the schools and industries. 

"In one city it was found that a group of boys employed in a tannery 
were attending a continuation school and making 'projects' in a woodworking 
shop. 

When asked about the school the tanner replied: ' It is good for a school, 
but why should my boys study woodworking?' 

Why cannot a school be established in the tannery and have the group 
of boys study a program as follows, permitting the teacher to give instruction 
right in the factory? 

Monday — First hour of .working day — practical mathematics related ta 

the trade. 
Tuesday — Same hour — the tannery business, one department and process 

after another taught by one of the tannery men. 
Wednesday — Same hour — English and related subjects reviewing their 

tannery instruction. 
Thursday — Same hour — Tannery business and appliances. 
Friday — Same hour — Civil Government. 

These boys have no use for woodworking and drafting related to the 
woodworking trade. It was found that the tannery was at a great loss for 
' all around ' men, while the present employment conditions are such that 
the boy has no opportunity to learn the business. 

" When the superintendent of the factory was interviewed by the writer 
regarding the advisability of working out such a plan, he replied that he 
would be only too glad to co-operate in such a scheme. Further he said, ' We 
hope to enlarge and expand our business, but we cannot find men properly 
trained to do it. This plan would provide so that the boy would learn the 
business right in the factory, while the instruction would cover the theoretical 
training which the factory employment can never give him." 

It is estimated that this sort of shop school would cost the 
city about three cents per pupil hour against from nine to twelve 



cents in the public school besides giving the pupil a superior in- 
struction that he could not otherwise get. 

In another city the local boards is endeavoring to establish a 
part-time school in a factory taught by practical teachers, some 
of them engaged by the city for part-time instruction from the 
shop itself. The employer is to give those in his employ under 
eighteen, one-half day's instruction per week. The school will 
be open for adults in the evening. The studies would consist of 
practical mathematics, related drafting, applied mechanics, Eng- 
lish, citizenship and geography from the standpoint of the in- 
dustry. There are such schools now in successful operation. 

Said a foreman, pointing to a row of drill-press men : "They 
always used to quarrel for increases in wages. I finally said to 
them, 'Confound you, if you want more wages you must know 
something.' They entered a public night school, soon got a 
raise and we were all satisfied." It was an exceptional school. 
It was correlated w4th tihe industries. 

Schools and classes can only be provided in factories where 
the number of pupils justifies. The especial advantage to the 
city is in the saving of plant and running expenses and in secur- 
ing technical or well correlated instruction from shop experts 
who could not well leave the premises. 

Often a factory is glad to give or lend special machinery to 
a city school for the instruction of pro'Spective employees. A 
glove factory is lending sewing machines with motor power to a 
sev^ing school wihose graduates, on entering the glove factory, 
have often broken down under the strain of power machines and 
the unaccustomed pressure and excitement of shop production. 

Many employments must be taught in each community and, 
contrary to convenience, relatively more occupations, population 
considered, must be taught in small communities than in big ones. 
Sometimes these small towns can be grouped and a single high- 
class instructor can teach a difficult subject or trade in several 
nearby towns better than for each town to have a separate and 
probably poorer instructor at more cost than a proportionate con- 
tribution to the salary of a single superior person. 

Manual Training 

Manual training as it has been developed or mis-developed 
in the United States is nondescript. It fits for nothing. In the 
elementary schools it is of much the same value as a month's 
course in botany to a sailor. It mig'ht lead to something, but it 
doesn't. Children do not commonly go from the manual train- 
ing schools into the industries. They go to college. 

Says a national authority, "Fll take you through all the 
manual training schools in this great city, and we won't find a 
set of tools fit for a mechanic to use. 

The trouble Is due to lack of correlation with the world of 
real work. 

S 



Manual training as it ought to be, as it will sometime be 
in this country — the sooner the better — and as it is to the great- 
est advantage in Europe, in ^lunich for instance, is vocational 
training and nothing else, training in the various occupations, 
given with intelligent regard to the larger correlations. Says Dr. 
kerschensteiner of Munich, in substance, "How can you make 
any difference between manual training and vocational training? 
In both the same machines are used. The materials are the same 
and the products." It is pure fad and ignorance that seeks to 
keep manual training a thing apart, 'purely cultural' (if we may 
be pardoned this wretched term). Shall we spend as much as 
we can and teach as little as we can? Our present manual train- 
ing is for those who will never work with their hands. Is there 
any experience more worth while in later years for such persons 
than that to be gained only by their living in the vocational 
schools the life of their more numerous brothers who do live by 
manual toil? Have Little Rich Boy and Little Blue Jeans 
work together in the vocational school as in other schools, to 
the end that they develop better understandings and friendships 
for the years to come. 

This is the practice in New Haven as described in the re- 
port of this committee last year. Of the hundreds of experts 
who have visited that school we know of none who would recom- 
mend otherwise. 

We illustrate on the following pages the situation as 
respects manual training and industrial training in three cities, 
each different, each wasteful of money and deficient in educa- 
tional quality for reasons inherent in the separation of these 
activities. Each of these cities has been successful in many 
respects. The suggestions here offered are accompanied with 
high appreciation and only for purposes of happy development. 

Congratulations that the city first shown has used tem- 
porary quarters whi'le rapidly extending vocational education 
and has not too soon fastened her feet in brick and mortar. 
She has come to serve over 2,000 of 'her working people. She 
can now act with ample knowledge and experience. 

It is costing her $55,000 annuallv to maintain nr^nual and 
vocational training in four buildings, Nos. 1-4 in the Chart, page 
10. The waste is excessive. For instance, a well-paid in- 
structor may have a class of eight in the manual training build- 
ing and another more highly paid instructor have a similar half- 
sized class at the same hour in the industrial school. In the com- 
mercial school the bookkeeping is imitative, that is — is not the 
keeping of real accounts. Perchance in one school a class lacks 
for equipment at an hour when the equipment needed is idle in 
another school. Again a class of eight or ten may be too ill as- 
sorted in the abilities of the pupils to permit of specialized in- 
struction befitting each one ; some may be butcher boys : one a 
grocer's : some from a plow shop and others from a trunk fac- 

9 



A J?ACINE^W1S. SCHOOLPROBLEM 



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31 






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DOM£ST/C 5CtEHC£L. 



Snx^^J^T/f ST 



PRE SEN T 
H/CHSChOOL. 



mahuAl TRi^itiir^C, 



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P/<Of='OSEC> . 

VOCA T/ON^L I 

SCHOOL I 



IAaJ 



KEY- 



] PRESEN T MA NUA L. 



Z F/?ESEA/T COOK/NC 
SCHOOL. 

3 F/i'ESEArr coAfAf^/^c/Ai. 

SCHOOjL 

4 P/?ES£^r CO/iT/NUA TION 
SCHOOL. 

DOrrfD L/A/ES f/iO/CATE /V/F/4^ 
C0N5TRUCT/0/^ 



10 



tory. Unite these schools, bring the 2,000 pupils oi the indus- 
trial schools and a thousand manual training and commercial 
pupils together — keep all the teachers busy during all school 
hours, with the classes fairly full and the saving in money would 
be from 30' to 40 per cent, of the $55,000 now spent. The in- 
struction would be improved beyond estimation by the larger op- 
portunity to classify pupils and correlate with the several oc- 
cupations. 

Under the old thoughtless way of giving only 'the leavings' 
to that eighty or ninety per cent, of the people who quit 
school in their early teens and to spend vast sums on the few, 
fit and unfit, who strive for college and the professions, this 
city might spend, as 'has been suggested, $350,000 on a palatial 
new^ High School as a royal road to college for a very few, and 
then turn over the leavings, the oid Hig^h School, to the little- 
regarded eighty or ninety per cent. 

This city is typical of all the more exclusively industrial com- 
munities of America, great and small. She draws her strength 
from her industries, from her power throug^h these industries to 
serve mankind and to reach out over the Earth for the trade 
thereof in manufactured necessities. Men, strong and admirable, 
have shaped t^hemselves through the stress of these activities. 
By sharing in her life, men have risen to great positions in 
Commerce, in Washington and on the highest Courts. Char- 
acter, power, beneficence, the best that man may wish for, 
have come of her travail. Is it conceivable that a city Of this 
type upon which the whofe nation must more and more de- 
pend for weal and woe, will long fail to train her people as 
adequately as possible for their respective occupations and 
for more and more convenient advancement in and through 
those occupations? 

At a cost of about $75,000 this city can build alongside 
her high school, a vocational school where life will be made 
intelligent and inspiring to that great majority of her children 
who cannot or will not go to high school or college. With 
this new school she will meet her full obligation. The High 
School (extended and renovated at moderate expense, as 
happens to be necessar}^) will continue to be her highway to 
college and the professions. Her new vocational school will 
be the working boys' high school and later his technical institute 
or college. The whole social and productive life of the city 
will be elevated and democracy in education will advance 
the social and economic democracy that our fathers con- 
templated and which only now we find the means of developing. 



11 



moD/sT/Ncra sfpajpate imr/ri/r/oNj 

IN TN£ SAME BU/lD/NGDOJm SAMS m//VG~ 

A BAD . CONDITION roi^ 

INDUSTMAL DDUCATION 



HIGH 



J. 



F/?OM THE /NDDSTR/ES 



/NSTRUCT/ON 



MA /-J UAL 
TRA/N/A/^ 



t 



FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, 



This illustrates how one city is endeavoring to work out the plan. 
It points toward 

1. Social distinctions between the working children and those 



2. 



attending academic schools. 
Duplication of 



Saving 



Teachers 
Materials • 
Equipment 

of annual appropriations. 



Manual Training should become a pdrt of the general scheme 
of Industrial Education, under one especially delegated authority or 
Board,representative of the occupations and interests of the community. 

In the city shown above we have industrial training under 
one management and manual training under another in the 
same building, close by the High School, with duplication of 
expense and oversight. 

The Money Waste 

Public education has been too much a thing apart and 
unamenable to those rules Whereby other public and private, 
activities are measured and justified. It is time that the rule 
of money efficiency be set up against all public schools and 
that it be determined what may be required in return for 
public school expenditures which now aggregate in the United 
States nearly $600,000,000 annually. 

This rule of money efficiency and return based upon de- 
pendable official records has recently been applied to a dozen 
towns and small cities, including three represented in the 
accompanying charts. 

12 



3EPAJ?ATE VOCATJOJVAL SCHOOL 
lV/r/-//TJ DLTPJl^/CA T/ON-A BAD CONi:^7T/OJ^ 

LET Tf-IEWGHSCNOOL IN f 



/-//GN 3C/fOOL. 



X 



fU/vrJAL. 



-u.'l "DRAINING- 



Vocational 

SCHOOJ^ 



In this city those in charge of the Industrial Education desire 
it to be entirely separate and not include the High School so-called 
Manual Training. 

Much duplication of expense can be saved by bringing them 
more closely together and have the Industrial Education serve both 
purposes under a carefully selected board, representative of the occu- 
pations and interests of the community. 

The Academic school children should not be deprived of the 
contact with real life and working conditions found in the practical 
representative school. 

As respects teaching- efficiency in these schools, the loss 
indicated, running from 35 to 46 per cent., implies no criticism 
of instructors because these losses inhere in the general feel- 
ing that when the public wants something there is no need 
of such serious study and procedure as will obtain the desired 
results economically. 

A summary of ten cities shows as follows : 



Instruction Possible 

Monthly Actual Pupil Pupil Hours 
TYPE Salary Hours per Week per Week 

Industrial Schools S3,437.70 11,004 *18,150 

Manual Training 1,831.00 6,232 11,505 

Combined Industrial and 

Manual 1,408.50 5,479 *8,400 



Loss 
% 
39 
46 

35 



S6,677.20 



22,715 



38,055 



* Allows full time of director for supervision. 

Says a State Director : "The above figures show that only 
two-thirds or less of the possible teaching time is being used. 
This is largely due to the small number of children to a class 
and a differentiation being made between industrial activities 
of the same kind for manual training on the one hand and the 
vocational school on the other." 

13 



''Because a sewing machine and a teacher of sewing is used 
for hig^h school girls is no reason why the same teacher and 
the same machine cannot be used for teaching sewing to the 
continuation school girl." 

''If they are united a large saving in salary and materials 
can be made besides bringing into our schools generally a 
large socializing influence which cannot be developed elsewhere 
through the teaching of the working girl or boy and the high 
school girl or boy in similar studies under similar conditions." 

The above summary is on a basis of schools, as usual 
throughout the United States, running only 25 hours a week 
and only 950 hours a year. 

But there are 8,760 hours in a year. Vocational schools 
should include Manual Training and run during the day time, 
eight hours a day, five and one-half days a week, and 50 weeks a 
year or 2,200 ihours per year, being one-fourth of all the hours 
in the year. Working children are accustomed to these hours 
at less fortunate employment. 

As President Eliot and other authorities affirm, vocational 
education offers such variety of experience and such exercise as 
not to fatigue. Innumerable children who cannot trifle through 
a sdhool year of 950 hours, will happily avail themselves of the 
longer year of 2,200 hours wihich is easier than employment, is 
inspiring, doubles their earning power and gives them more 
schooling in two years than a High School in four years. We 
talk of wasted years. Two years saved in the teens may be as 
worth while as in later life. American children go to school less 
hours in the day, less days in tlhe week, less weeks in the year, 
than the children of any other first-rate country. 

And for how long will a big healthy body of public 
servants, our 400,000 sdhool teachers, wish to work for only 
one-tenth of their time, 950 hours a year, with a little additional 
time given to preparation. 

Nine hundred and fifty hours of strictly academic work is 
enough for little children but another hour or two can well be 
added in the common schools if devoted to vocational subjects 
which exercise the body and give the stimulation that play does. 

Some of the best vocational schools are now running 2,200 
hours per year day time very successfully. 

In addition to the day period, good schools are open even- 
ings for those who cannot attend during the day time, partly 
with supplementary teachers and with no one teaching be- 
yond eight hours a day. 

Surveys for Industrial Education 

Investigations with recommendations like those charted 
above are made by experienced persons in from two to eiglht 
days at relatively no expense. Wherever made, they have 
been accepted by everyone with keen appreciation as offering 

14 



an ample basis for adequate and almost immediate action. In 
none of these cities has there developed any demand for dif- 
ferent or more expensive surveys. 

As was said to the Board of Education of New York City 
by its expert for vocational training", three-fourths of all the in- 
formation needed for the development of Industrial Education 
in any community is immediately at hand ready for use. Said 
the President of a State Federation of Labor who participated 
in a $10,000 city survey : "It disclosed nothing that we did not 
know before." 

An educator who is largely responsible for the schools 01 
his city and for a "survey" of that cit}^ for Industrial Education, 
said, "The survey was worth $50,000." When asked how he 
found it so, he said for the following reasons : 

(1) " We (presumably * we local educators ') knew nothing about the 
laboring people and the laboring people knew nothing about us. They had 
never had anyone talk with them about the schools and we never talked 
with them Nobody had the time to. 

(2) " Until the survey, we really thought we needed a trade school. The 
survey convinced us we did not, and so saved a probable investment of 
S200,000 in trade school. We have positively dropped this idea since the 
survey was made. 

(3) " It may have been very obvious that we needed many trade extension 
classes, but I will confess that in the midst of administrative duties, none 
of us thought of it. 

(4) " We have no real compulsory education in , our people have to 

be handled by moral suasion. The survey gave them a new light, not 
so much by what was found out, as by the light that came to the people by 
being interested in questions relating to preparation for life's work." 

In conclusion he says, "In many places it would be a waste of money to 
conduct Surveys, but I cannot say that that was the case with us." 

The italics are ours. They disclose the situation. Voca- 
tional surveys, such as the country has been addicted to 
recently, are excusable mostly because, though wasteful, vol- 
uminous and repetitional, they open the eyes of school people 
to the existence of "laboring people," to the world of work and 
its needs. It breaks down to some extent the wall that has 
s'hut out the world from the schools. They have been valuable, 
if at all, "not by what they found out," but "by the light that 
came from being interested" in the obvious. They are a very 
costly way of introducing neighbors who should need no in- 
troductions. These surveys gather no new or essential facts 
on Industrial Education. They only pick them up from nearby 
files or carry them from town to town. A Vocational School 
Board directly representative of the occupations would be 
hindered by such as have been most talked about. 

It is earnestly submitted that every community knows 
itself essentially, its industries, and tfhe need of training therein. 
There should be no more surveys to disclose general conditions, 
but only the immediate study and deliberation of the city 
fathers and other representative local people, together with 
experienced Vocational School men who have done the things 

15 



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CONrE-J^BNCEBOA/^D 



The purpose of this Conference Board is to avoid duplication^ 
promote co-ordination, and insure inclusive action. It is for the 
consideration of related interests at their points of contact in in- 
dustrial education for the State. 

It is not open to the other great activities delegated particu- 
larly to the several institutions represented. 



16 



wanted in other cities and can therefore directly and unassum- 
ingly help the local authorities to come readily to decisions 
which they can but believe from their own independent think- 
ing are right and vital. 

Huge volumes of surveys have been printed. We have 
yet to see one on Industrial Education that has not quickly 
gone upon a back shelf partly because it left off about where 
it might have begun, and was weig'hted down by the education- 
ally obvious. 

A State Conference Board 
Co-ordination of Pnblic Activities 

Much as local schools and industries may be co-ordinated, 
state agencies may well co-ordinate more or less informally 
upon any problem upon which they severally touch. They 
all serve one great and good master, the State. In that service 
everything should be done and nothing overdone. 

The state agencies indicated in the chart on page i6 
annually spend and disburse as state aid, approximately the 
following sums: 

Industrial Commission $115,000.00 

University Extension in carrying higher education out to the 

people through itinerant teachers and correspondence courses . . 225,000.00 

Department of Public Instruction: 

Expense $72,000.00 

State Aid 2,220,000.00 

2,292,000.00 

Stout Institute for training vocational teachers 140,000.00 

State Board of Industrial Education, State Aid 150,000.00 

$2,922,000 00 

It is evident that each of these bodies may perfectly per- 
form its major operations and yet materially further the public 
interests by carefully planning with the other bodies upon a 
subject that affects all more or less. The estaiblishment of this 
point of contact upon invitation of the State Board of Indus- 
trial Education would seem to indicate that the latter board 
wihich was once criticised as "separate" and like'ly to be in- 
considerate of other interests because it is by statute directly 
representative of industry and labor as well as of education, 
is in fact and because of its representative character, inclined 
to advise itself and be helped as far as possible in all ways. 

Your Committee congratulates the Association. It fore- 
saw upon mature investigation what are the substantial, under- 
lying needs and methods for the education in the employments 
and in citizenship of the vast majority of the people to the 
end that those better aspirations may be fulfilled which are 

17 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



009 434 502 9 

cherished by all of whatever station or convaiLiun , mat good 
wages may be well earned and wealth diffused ; that as a nation 
we may sell more of skill and art and less of brawn and raw 
material ; and that that better understanding may prevail that 
comes of skill and training in co-operative endeavor. Our 
platform of three years ago broug^ht much opposition. Today 
all are standing on it with us. 

We have presented the following resolutions to the Resolu- 
tions Committee of the Convention, with recommendations for 
their adoption : 

RESOLVED: That the National Association of 
Manufacturers hereby reaffirms its former resolutions in 
respect to Industrial Education. 

FEDERAL AID 

As respects Federal aid for Vocational Education the 
National Association of Manufacturers recommends as 
follows : 

I. Liberal Federal appropriations for the promotion of 
Vocational Education in the United States. 

II. That Federal appropriations be allotted among 
the States upon a uniform basis and bear a uniform re- 
lation to appropriations made by the states for like 
purposes. 

III. The creation of a Federal Board of Vocational 
Education representative of the interests vitally concerned, 
manufacturing, commerce, labor, and agriculture. The 
Commissioner of Education to be a member ex officio. The 
Board to elect one of its members chairman. 

IV. That the Federal Board should be required to ap- 
point advisory committees of five members each, repre- 
senting industry, commerce, labor, agriculture, homemak- 
ing, and general or vocational education. 

Respectfully submitted, 

The Committee. 

H. E. Miles, Chairman, 
E. F. Du Brul, 
Aldus C. Higgins, 
H. M. Leland, 
J. W. Mason, 
RoLLiN S. Woodruff. 

V 

18 




009 434 502 9 



